What I think today about the "next word" in the Dictionary.

Tag Archives: translation

I have had enough spirituality to satisfy the Pope in Rome, enough emotion to make a twelve-year-old girl cry for hours, enough mental stimulus that I’ve fooled some people into thinking I was smart, and in my earlier years, enough exercise to play tennis at a standard that people didn’t laugh when they saw me on the court.

Mine is a blessed existence.

During one of those times of spiritual investigation, I discovered that a verse from the Good Book–where Jesus told his disciples that he was going to heaven to “prepare a place for them,” and that in his Father’s house were “many mansions”–that the use of the word “mansion” did not really mean a huge house with multiple bathrooms and servants. Actually, there are those who feel that the closest translation would be the word “compartment.”

You see, that just makes me laugh.

God is so on point.

The idea that all of us human beings would be able to be anywhere together–even if we were in a glorified state–and have it resemble heaven, is nearly preposterous.

So I think God, in His infinite wisdom, is going to find a space for each one of us that just suits our fancy, while we simultaneously believe we’re interacting with everybody.

I don’t need a mansion–but I would favor a compartment decorated and suited to my personality and whim.

Of course, that’s working on the supposition that such an afterlife exists, and that if it does…some puny soul like me would ever be welcome.

Abridge: (v.): 1.to shorten (a book, movie, text or speech) without losing the sense. 2. curtail: Even the right to free speech can be abridged.

This happened to me several months ago.

I realized that my essays, speeches, and even books were getting too long. They needed to be abridged. But you see, the only problem with making something shorter is that the evidence of truth is often hidden in the longer discourse.

But our entire world is abridged, via texting, tweeting and even an instinct to summarize deep concepts into brief sound bytes. So I was thinking about famous thoughts or virtues that were once spoken in some length that now would be abridged in our society for the sake of convenience and ease of comprehension:

The Sermon on the Mount— It probably would be summarized via a tweet, to four words: Be good to people. Much would be lost in the translation,k but the tweeter would certainly insist that the summary was sufficient and specifics, unnecessary.

And of course, there’s The Bible, which would basically be tweeted out: “There is a God. Act accordingly.”

Even though I see the value of an occasional Reader’s Digest abridging of certain aspects of human communication, there are thoughts that require the beauty of language and the interlacing of the fabric of phrases.

So brevity is the soul of wit–but sometimes being witty is not nearly as pretty.